NASA researchers will present new findings on a wide range of Earth and space science topics at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, Dec. 12-16 in San Francisco. NASA-related briefings will be carried live on the agency’s website. Media registration is open for the event, which will be held at the Moscone Convention Center at 747 Howard St. […]

NASA has selected a first-of-its-kind Earth science mission that will extend our nation’s lead in measuring key greenhouse gases and vegetation health from space to advance our understanding of Earth’s natural exchanges of carbon between the land, atmosphere and ocean. The primary goals of the Geostationary Carbon Cycle Observatory (GeoCARB), led by Berrien […]

The launch of NASA’s Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) spacecraft is scheduled for 8:24 a.m. EST Monday, Dec. 12. News briefings, live launch commentary, photo opportunities and other media events will be held at nearby NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and carried live on NASA Television and the agency’s website. During the one-hour wi […]

NASA’s International Space Station Rapid Scatterometer (ISS-RapidScat) Earth science instrument has ended operations following a successful two-year mission aboard the space station. The mission launched Sept. 21, 2014, and had recently passed its original decommissioning date. ISS-RapidScat used the unique vantage point of the space station to provide near- […]

NASA has selected Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, California, to provide launch services for the agency's Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission. Launch is targeted for April 2021 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The total cost for NASA to launch SWOT is […]

A new multi-institutional study of the temporary slowdown in the global average surface temperature warming trend observed between 1998 and 2013 concludes the phenomenon represented a redistribution of energy within the Earth system, with Earth’s ocean absorbing the extra heat. The phenomenon was referred to by some as the “global warming hiatus.” Global ave […]

October 2016 was the second warmest October in 136 years of modern record-keeping, according to a monthly analysis of global temperatures by scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. October 2016's temperature was 0.18 degrees Celsius cooler than the warmest October in 2015. Last month was 0.89 degrees Celsius wa […]

Operation IceBridge, NASA’s airborne survey of changes in polar ice, is closing in on the end of its eighth consecutive Antarctic deployment, and will likely tie its 2012 campaign record for the most research flights carried out during a single Antarctic season. “We are probing the most remote corners of Spaceship Earth to learn more about changes that affec […]

After Hurricane Sandy rocked the U.S. East Coast in 2012, the New York City government set out to repair the city — and asked for NASA’s help. The mayor’s office didn’t want NASA scientists out there with hammers or hard hats. Instead, they asked for information to include in their blueprints on how climate change, specifically increased risk of flooding, wi […]

A large cyclone that crossed the Arctic in December 2015 brought so much heat and humidity to this otherwise frigid and dry environment that it thinned and shrank the sea ice cover during a time of the year when the ice should have been growing thicker and stronger, a NASA study found. A large cyclone that crossed the Arctic in December 2015 brought so much […]

Construction is now complete on the first of the two satellites for NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO) mission, planned for launch in the December 2017/January 2018 timeframe. The satellite, built by Airbus Defence and Space at its manufacturing facility in Friedrichshafen, Germany, will spend the next several months under […]

As scientists and crew with NASA’s Operation IceBridge mission prepared for a research flight on Nov. 5, 2016, the weather in Punta Arenas, Chile, was cold, wet and windy. But when they reached their survey site in West Antarctica, skies were clear and winds were calm—a perfect day for scientists to collect data over the Getz Ice Shelf. IceBridge, now in its […]

Beginning this month, NASA is launching a suite of six next-generation, Earth-observing small satellite missions to demonstrate innovative new approaches for studying our changing planet. These small satellites range in size from a loaf of bread to a small washing machine and weigh from a few to 400 pounds (180 kilograms). Their small size keeps development […]

Scientists have produced the first global maps of human emissions of carbon dioxide ever made solely from satellite observations of the greenhouse gas. The maps, based on data from NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite and generated with a new data-processing technique, agree well with inventories of known carbon dioxide emissions. No s […]

You might not realize it, but there’s a silent symphony overhead at any given time: NASA’s satellites talking to Earth. They track our planet’s weather, the height of its oceans, and even the changing mass of its ice. Those science measurements are then beamed down to ground stations, where they’re processed for scientists studying our changing world. Starti […]

Two new studies by researchers at NASA and the University of California, Irvine (UCI), detect the fastest ongoing rates of glacier retreat ever observed in West Antarctica and offer an unprecedented direct view of intense ice melting from the floating undersides of glaciers. The results highlight how the interaction between ocean conditions and the bedrock b […]

At the southern end of the Earth, a NASA plane carrying a team of scientists and a sophisticated instrument suite to study ice is returning to surveying Antarctica. For the past eight years, Operation IceBridge has been on a mission to build a record of how polar ice is evolving in a changing environment. The information IceBridge has gathered in the Antarct […]

A new NASA and university study using NASA satellite data finds that tide gauges — the longest and highest-quality records of historical ocean water levels — may have underestimated the amount of global average sea level rise that occurred during the 20th century. A research team led by Philip Thompson, associate director of the University of Hawaii Sea Leve […]

September 2016 was the warmest September in 136 years of modern record-keeping, according to a monthly analysis of global temperatures by scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. September 2016's temperature was a razor-thin 0.004 degrees Celsius warmer than the previous warmest September in 2014. The margin is s […]